In Deepa Kumar's view, Islamophobic myths of a perpetual struggle between Islam and the West, sometimes held in abeyance but always eventually resurfacing, seriously misrepresent history. … Kumar reminds us that, in fact, attitudes to Islam and Muslims in the West have changed across history: from an early, baffled curiosity to the comparative harmony of La Convivencia in Moorish Spain, the hostility of the Crusades, the Romantic-era fascination with the "Gorgeous East," and the most recent phase in which U.S. policies toward Muslim countries have been pragmatic and varied.

XREF: Connects to Edward Said's Orientalism and debates about the cyclical vs. linear nature of Islam-West relations.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 38